Israeli leaders are forced to balance calls for “lethal” military bravura, essential for garnering Zionist Jewish support internally, with maintaining its image abroad.

Israel’s Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai tells the American Jewish Committee: “if we see more of the radical left or the progressive liberal Jews continuing to support BDS and Black Lives Matter, as similar to the Palestinians, and they relate to Israel as a genocide state or an apartheid state, we may lose America.”

The extremist response by Israeli leaders to Ben & Jerry’s — that it is antisemitic or terrorist — ignores the fact that McDonald’s has refused to operate in Israeli settlements for many years. McDonald’s just didn’t make a big splash about it. Ben & Jerry’s very public move is fostering the BDS campaign that sees Israeli human violations on both sides of the Green Line.

Israel is determined to pressure Unilever to change the Ben & Jerry’s decision not to sell ice cream in occupied territory; and six left-of-center Jewish parliamentarians originally signed on to a letter deploring the decision. They backed out later, but their instinct shows how broadly committed Jewish Israelis are to “Judea and Samaria” as part of Israel.

Meretz represents the far left of Israeli politics and even its leader says even he buys settlement products. This more than anything shows the overwhelming Israeli political consensus behind the settlements.

Yair Lapid, hero of liberal Zionists in the U.S., explains why his government sought a law barring Palestinian families unification in Israel. “There’s no need to hide from the purpose of the law. It’s one of the tools meant to secure a Jewish majority in Israel. Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.” And leftwing Zionist party Meretz went along with the racist bill. Though Palestinian members of Knesset overwhelmingly opposed it.

Israel has had a “temporary” law passed again and again since 2003 to deny both Jewish and Palestinian residents of Israel who choose to marry Palestinians the right to live with their partner in Israel. The Palestinian party in the new government is against extending it. While Netanyahu taunts that the government is reliant on anti-Zionists and pushes for a permanent law affirming Jewish supremacy yet again.

Pro-Israel advocates are attempting to sanitize new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s 2013 quote, “I’ve killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that.” Jonathan Ofir shows that not only is this campaign lying, but Bennett’s statement is actually even worse than it appears.

Liberal Zionists are celebrating Israel’s new rightwing prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Why? Although many secular Zionist leftists may not see him as “Our guy”, they may still identify with him on his militarism and the startup ideology, and this may be enough to sanitize him for them, as a pragmatic partner whom they can emotionally accept.

Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s “Change bloc” that may form the next Israeli government is not ideologically very different to a Likud bloc. It might not have the extreme right Kahanist faction of Jewish Power in it, as the right bloc did, but the Change bloc really is about Jewish power anyway: the Zionist dominance of Jewish power.